Network

Below please find some information on the most important partners in the Wissenschaftskolleg's network.

New Europe College Bukarest With the New Europe Prize (awarded by Some Institutes for Advanced Study) as start-up capital, the philosopher and art historian Andrei Plesu (Fellow 1991/1992) founded the New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest in 1994, which was the first independent institute for advanced study in Romania. The idea was to afford those suppressed or marginalized scholarly approaches the chance to develop as well as to create a free space for innovative thinking and research; the loftiest goal was formation of a new scholarly elite for the country. Since then the NEC has developed into an influential international institution promoting innovative research in the humanities and social sciences. It awards outstanding young scholars fellowships for one or two semesters and supports them in their work. It mediates contacts with scientists and scholars all over the world, fosters exchange and cross-fertilization among different research traditions and disciplines, and stimulates networking and the renewal of teaching and research particularly in the Romanian academic system. A major focus of the NEC is on those regions beyond Romania’s southeast borders – on those peoples of the Black Sea and the Balkans.

Centre for Advanced Study Sofia The Center for Advanced Study (CAS), an independent research center, was founded in Sofia in 2000 through the help of foreign endowments and states. The director is the historian Diana Mishkova (Fellow 1998/1999) and she is supported in her work by three academic associates from the disciplines of sociology, economics, and philosophy. First and foremost, the CAS fosters outstanding research and scholarly cooperation in the historical sciences in Bulgaria and the surrounding region by offering stipends to talented younger scholars within the framework of research projects lasting several years and thereby affording them the opportunity of carrying out collaborative work under the guidance of selected senior scholars. With regular series of events, discussion forums, and various online portals, the CAS is a platform for research in the humanities and social sciences in Bulgaria and Southeast Europe as well as serving to mediate diverse contacts in the region. For the past several years the CAS has also offered fellowships of variable length to foreign and domestic scholars.

Bibliotheca Classica Sankt Petersburg In 1994, with the aid of the New Europe Prize, the classical philologist and former Wissenschaftskolleg Fellow (1996/1997) Alexander Gavrilov founded the Bibliotheca Classica in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Bibliotheca Classica is closely tied, both spatially and in terms of personnel, to the local Humanistic Gymnasium (high school with advanced courses in the classics and classical languages). This reference library brings together the city’s younger classics scholars for joint seminars and research projects, publishes two specialized journals, and organizes cooperative efforts with partner institutions abroad. Its activities are intended as a contribution to developing and strengthening classical studies and philology in Russia.

Point Sud. Muscler le savoir local - Forschungszentrum lokales Wissen in Bamako It was in Bamako, Mali, that the Wissenschaftskolleg – with the aid of the VolkswagenStiftung and in cooperation with the University of Bayreuth – supported the Malian ethnologist and former Fellow (1994/1995) historian Mamadou Diawara in establishing the research center “Point Sud. Muscler le savoir local.” The goal of this center, which began life in October 1997, is to conduct research on local traditions of knowledge in West Africa in relation to development projects. This is based on the experience that development projects have to take into account the perspective of the farming population and especially the way that new knowledge and new technologies are transposed into the realm of existing traditions. Point Sud organizes research seminars and international colloquia in cooperation with sister institutions in neighboring African countries. Point Sud seeks to promote not only scientific and scholarly communication among Western industrial nations and African countries (“North-South”) but among African countries themselves (“South-South”). After initial start-up funding from the VolkswagenStiftung, Point Sud has received funding from the University of Frankfurt, Hessia, and the GTZ.

Institut d'Etudes Avancées (IEA) de Nantes In January 2009 the Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Nantes opened in Nantes, France. The institute was established under the aegis of Alain Supiot (a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in 1997/1998) and each year it hosts some twenty Fellows who work on research projects of their own choosing during their stay. What is special about the IEA de Nantes is its express dedication to regions such as Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, which tend to be ignored in Anglophone-dominated scholarly interchange. Each year the institute seeks to have half of its Fellows be from non-Western countries so as to foster dialogue and mutual awareness and in order to discuss differences and commonalities in the perception and solution of problems within the context of globalization. The IEA Nantes thereby aims to make a contribution to a new style of intellectual relations between the countries of North and South and to become a site of shared and reciprocal learning. Since 2015, the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study is a member of Some Institutes for Advanced Study (SIAS) consortium.